Saturday, April 2, 2011

Foot (and Shoe) Reference Part 2

When it comes to challenging parts of anatomy, feet rank right up there with hands and faces in terms of difficulty. Look at the paintings of Frank Frazetta; he would often go to great lengths to avoid painting a character's feet, even though they were perfectly acceptable when he did paint them. Drawing feet in shoes is challenging for many as well; I don't know how many odd kidney bean and smooshed bread loaf like appendages I've seen drawn at the bottom of a figure's legs over the years. But fret not, Jack Hamm has given us these wonderful guidelines in his classic figure drawing manual "Drawing the head & figure":

Yes, the footwear is somewhat dated. But with a little imagination one should be able to turn them into anything from strappy sandals to cowboy boots. I highly recommend Hamm's book; particularly for it's section on drawing the head, which is far too extensive to post here!

This is really amazing. What a fabulous resource for the pedal challenged. George Petty detested painting feet so much so that he ended up binding all his pinups in ballet shoes, even if they were Ridge tool girls. One exception was the pinup artist, Enoch Bolles, whose grandfather owned a shoe company which he worked for before going into the illustration business where he started doing fashion ads. He had no problem with feet, shod or not and in fact never put his girls in the same pair of shoes in his 550 plus magazine covers. Thanks for posting this.Jack

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